In many surgical procedures, it is necessary to join blood vessels end to end. The procedure of connecting blood conduits, such as vessels, prostheses or grafts, which are brought into communication with one another is known by the term vascular anastomosis. The main aim of performing a vascular anastomosis is to achieve maximal patency rates. An important factor to achieve that goal is to minimize damage to the vessel walls.
The most common device for holding body tissues together after injury or during surgery is surgical suture. Suturing is the joining of tissues with needle and thread so that the tissues bind together and heal. This method was first described in about 3000 BC. Suturing is a cheap technique and is a method of choice for joining body tissue, such as in vascular anastomosis, but the technique suffers from disadvantages. A main drawback is that suturing is slow, prolonging surgery. This results in more time the patient must be anaesthetized and less available time for other patients in the operating theatre. Suturing is also not ideal in small blood vessels. A further problem resulting from stitching is leaking from the gaps between each stitch and damage to the vascular wall.
Alternative methods or adjuvants to the use of sutures in wound closure include gluing with medical grade adhesives, stapling, clips, laser welding, rings and stents. These methods may be quicker than suturing, but are not ideal. Adhesives are difficult to use in anastomosis of small blood vessels, may take time to work, may not be strong enough to hold together certain biological structures for the needed time period and may cause toxicity, leakage and aneurysm formation. Staples suffer from the disadvantage that they need to be removed and may cause more stenosis than sutures. Stents may result in early occlusion. Laser welding is costly, necessitating specialized surgical skills and may have reduced strength in larger-sized vessels. Clips are problematic in long term joining of vessels of larger diameter where the pressure is too high. Rings cause rigidity and a non-compliant anastomosis.
It would therefore be desirable to have a device and method for joining body tissues, which would be quick to use, provide uniform connection and patency without the problem of narrowing the lumen. It would also be advantageous if the method was of low cost and did not require unusual experience or skill. The present invention provides such a device and method.